The unravelling sock

This Thursday, March 20, the latest instalment in Mythopeic’s Creative Music+Film Series will feature an operetta played by puppets and a collaboration between a jazz musician and visual artist who are united, body and soul.

Paul Velat, aka Lord of the Yum-Yum, will premiere Sock: an Operetta of Epic Proportions, a tale of a man who wakes up to find a sock missing, but manages to track down one unravelling thread, which he follows into an alternate dimension. Once there, Orpheus-style, he must convince the other-dimensional keeper to allow him to retrieve the sock. Sock will have all the trappings of your garden-variety operetta, including recitative, arias and playbills.

Before Velat takes over the room, jazz multi-instrumentalist Tom Abbs (cello, percussion, flute, didgeridoo, video triggers) will perform alongside artist M.P. Landis (painting, light manipulation, sound triggers), with both artists collaborating and improvising live pieces. The Brooklyn-based performers not only share the same brownstone, they’ve also swapped an organ: Abbs donated his left kidney to Landis just over a year ago. The donation process is chronicled in the 45-minute documentary To Give is to Receive is to Give, which will kick off the night.

e. brown from Audio Recon will be spinning in the interstices.

Speaking of spinning, the night (and the entirety of Abbs and Landis’ tour) is sponsored by the heavyweight avant-jazz label ESP-Disk. The whole of the ESP catalogue, which includes a boatload of essential recordings by free jazz luminaries like Albert Ayler, Pharaoh Sanders and Ornette Coleman, will be on sale at the show.

Doors open at 8 p.m. for the Radio Radio (1119 E. Prospect St.) show and cover is $5.

Eclectic Electric, other shows

Music and art will once again be paired Friday, March 21, when the Independent Band Collective’s Eclectic Electric: Local Art and Music Revue alights on Birdy’s (2131 E. 71st St.). The show will feature music by Steven Cooley, The Language, Amo Joy, Rebuilt and visual art by Emma Overman, Janet Panoch, Michael Altman and NUVO’s infamous Wayne “Barfly” Bertsch. Just $6 gets you into the 9 p.m. show.

And there’s always more than we can possibly cover in detail, like Carrie Newcomer’s show Saturday, March 22 at the Eiteljorg Museum (500 W. Washington St.), which gets underway at 7 p.m. and costs $15-$20. Wade Coggeshall caught up with Carrie last month, and the interview and profile are accessible at www.nuvo.net/articles/consider_the_geode_with_carrie_newcomer/.